


Ten in the Afternoon

by angeldescendant



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga), ワンパンマン | One-Punch Man, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Attempt at Humor, But wasn't he all along??, Class 1-A as adults, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Mentor!Deku, Saitama makes a cameo just for the lulz, Shorter shows why Deku ain't playing, Shorter will become a real hero, Supportive Class 1-A (My Hero Academia), Team as Family, The race to know Deku's successor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 10:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17702585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeldescendant/pseuds/angeldescendant
Summary: Shorter Wong dies and goes to heaven. Only, this heaven is whack. Pro-hero is a line of work, having superpowers is normal, and who is that crazy man in a green onesie that keeps telling him he is One For All's successor?





	Ten in the Afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [Genn-san's](https://twitter.com/NOIR_0000) short comic that has long been deleted. I have a translated copy though if you guys are curious. 
> 
> All I want to say is Shorter deserved better. Will be introducing the other BNHA characters in the following chapters.
> 
> I am nervous because this is my first BNHA fic of sorts? So comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated!

_What is unlikely isn’t always extraordinary._

_-Inigo Thomas, The Canvas Bag (Granta 145: Ghosts)_

* * *

 

There is the bar, Shorter one of the remaining two men on the counter, a flashy blonde bartender in a tuxedo who makes him a wicked mojito– his sixth, and a forgotten conversation.

 

Now that he thinks about it, he cannot make out the other man beside him. He really must have been drunk as hell. They share a bottle of vodka before turning his head at the bartender.

 

Almost forty-eight hours later, Shorter’s wildest dreams come true. There, after more than half a year in heaven, he sees his good-looking face on TV.

 

“Jesus,” he tells his roommate in their apartment, a fellow purple-haired recluse named Shishikura. He cannot understand what the actual fuck is going on. Jargon and mishmashed phrases zoom back and forth. One thing is for certain though. “They took my bad side,” he affirms. He looks better if their video of him selling his noodles has been taken if he tilts his head to accent his right jawline. His photographer friend in another plane has suggested it.

 

Instead of mocking him or ignoring him, Shishikura snorts. “You can tell them next time.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Even Shorter was taken aback by Shishikura’s sudden assurance. The words on the screen still haven’t made any sense.

 

“Trust me,” Shishikura says as he munches on the last of the leftover dumplings from Shorter’s peddling earlier. Despite his reedy frame, he has a black hole for a stomach. “This won’t be the last you’ll see your ugly mug _anywhere_.”

 

A few seconds before Shorter has processed what’s happening there is a knock on the door.

 

* * *

 

It’s a good thing though that it will take quite awhile before the media discovers his location and only a teensy bit earlier for a man in a green onesie to stalk him when he pushes his noodle cart to make a living.

 

Shorter knows that he is dead and currently in heaven. He knows that his best friend had killed him, he had left a kid to care for his turf in Manhattan Chinatown and his sister by herself to pay for their debt, those shit were old hat. His best friend did it because he was a goner. He already updated Lao to advise the squirt. His sister can now flirt with dehydrated Ed Sheeran in peace, whatever, they’ll be fine without him. Shorter couldn’t believe, however, that heaven had no Chinese food when he and his then new-room mate would go drinking his first night in (Shishikura by then still bothered to care since he wanted Shorter to owe him for use later). They end up scouring the entire city only to go to a ramen place in disappointment.

 

“Jesus fucking Christ, you guys all dress weird,” he notes Shishikura’s large eyeglasses and black military coat with a customised apron. It’s more than eighty degrees out.

 

“That’s because we’re on the job,” Shishikura says in his monotone voice (this creeps Shorter out because he’s the first out of the other colourful characters he’d meet in heaven) before slurping his bowl. “As a civilian, you should understand this. Are you from another planet or something? This has to be normal even from that rock you’re from.”

 

Actually Shorter is either from earth or another dimension, but he cannot say ‘fuck you’ to Shishikura in kind because that is rude when this geezer treated him out. He also wants to ask why the hell Shishikura cannot even completely make his mickey mouse gloves cover his hand but again he doesn’t want to act like an ignorant prat. “Not really. Only a few people wear costumes.” He only saw street performers or cosplayers do so when he was skipping through the busy parts of New York.

 

“Really? That must be a peaceful town you lived in,” Shishikura says. “That’s why you ’re here?”

 

Shorter honestly has no idea so he simply shrugs. “Guess I wanna lie low. Don’t want the kind of life I lived before.”

 

“That must be _quite_ a life you had,” Shishikura says dryly. He obviously has no fucks to give. “You said you wanted Chinese food? What are those?”

 

“I ran a resto with my sis back there serving that kind of food. Kinda weird because that kind of food should be present in a city like this.”

 

“You should try opening a store. Would help you pay the rent. Babysit, whatever,” Shishikura shrugs as he impatiently taps the table. His bowl is already empty, while Shorter’s remains half-full. “I’ll lend you some money and you can pay me.”

 

So Shorter ends up buying a little cart with ‘Chang Dai’ hand-painted in big yellow letters over the body he paints in red. He is no idiot hence he put up his stall outside the biggest school in the area. Students are suckers to cheap yet tasty grub, plus the school’s a ten-minute walk from his place. Win-win.

 

His guess is spot-on. The students, being either too tired or too lazy to cook their own shit, ends up going outside to buy his own hand-pulled noodles or orange chicken. They usually come during lunch and early dinner, so he’d be at home around nine and push his cart there by ten in the morning. Some students have begged, however, that he go early so he arrives before seven. He was sure his friends and foes back in Manhattan will laugh when they see him living his time peddling Chinese cuisine outside a school as a hapless street vendor. Really a far cry from being a feared gang leader in New York.

 

But what surprises him (and Shishikura, maybe, if he gave a damn) is he got crazy popular, not only for the students but shockingly, to the teachers and the cosplaying adults. He ends up putting folding tables and stools beside his cart for some parents who were picking up their kids for the weekend or teachers on their break. He remembers a long-haired man with heavy-lidded eyes asking for takeout shrimp dumplings for his colleagues to the students’ astonishment. He goes by Aizawa (?) according to the students and apparently the principal of the school. He rarely goes out during break on normal days. They added that those dumplings were for him and him alone.

 

The cosplaying adults (and the interning students) also act more normally than he initially thought, at least when he got used to the crazy shit. The most normal crazy shit is the woman with pink skin and hair while the craziest he had seen so far is the fucking guy who had a speech bubble for a head but whatever. Heaven must be pretty crazy if Chinese cuisine does not exist there. God has been pretty brutal with allotting him to bizarre-o land, but the people are nice and helpful.

 

Plus compared to Ash and the rest, these people say his food is _great_.

 

Shorter fears the number of people that lining up for his honest-to-god fucking amazing grub will earn him a day in the slammer, but it turns out even the police are big fans of the Chang Dai Masutafu Branch. He has a soft spot with the overzealous officer sporting a bald head and one hell of a voice that nearly blew his cart away when he proclaimed his noodles are god’s gift to heaven. That’s one for the team.

 

To conclude, fuck Manhattan and his old life. He has no debts, no melodrama, no idiots to babysit, and no one saying his food’s dogshit. This was heaven, like for real. Much more when he earns enough money to rent a space in the mall to no longer bother pushing the cart when he returns home.

 

At least until he sees his face on the television set.

 

“What the hell is a symbol of peace?” Shorter turns at Shishikura in the present time, who points at the freckled man in a green jumpsuit speaking animatedly in HD.

 

“That dude,” he pointed at freckle-face. “Is the current number one hero around here.”

 

“And what does he mean successor for One For All?”

 

“You might end up becoming a pro-hero and his disciple.”

 

“So you guys are superheroes?” That explains the outlandish costumes and the mysterious things his customer has done for him. He remembers how one customer with red and white hair ignited his stove and cools his tofu just by a snap of his fingers. Or how a thin guy suddenly produces a strong tape for his leaking rooftop one rainy day, making him cut further expenses then. He cannot believe God put him in comic book heaven. _Holy shit_.

 

“Yes.”

 

“And I’ll be one too?”

 

“Possibly. I don’t care, honestly.”

 

With the possibility that freckle-face is telling the truth… Things will be busier. He might even bid goodbye to his noodle business, the one he worked hard for months. Is he supposed to be grateful?

 

There was the dreaded knock on the door. The same man on the TV was grinning from ear to ear beyond his keyhole.

 

“He’s here.”

 

“About time you scram,” Shishikura looks at his watch. “I waited six months and I can finally be alone.”

 

“Hi, Shorter Wong! It is I, the champion of peace and power, Deku!” their unwanted guest called out behind the door.

 

Shorter buries his face in his hands. “Jesus fucking Christ, don’t kick me out, man. This guy is bonkers.” He just wants to be a noodle vendor, for crying out loud. _Symbol of peace, my ass._

 

“I assure you, my boy, that you are in good hands!” Apparently, Deku also has acute hearing. _Super._ “We can train after you are finished working.”

 

“You don’t even know me,” Shorter says. “We’ve never met and you’re telling me this?”

 

“We’ve talked about it in the bar, remember?”

 

Shorter blinks. So this is the guy… What the hell, god?

 

“I don’t have any powers man!”

 

“No, not yet,” Deku says in a reassuring voice. “But you will when I pass One For All to you! Are you ready to be a future hero, my boy?”

 

Shorter decides to call the cops.

 

* * *

 

The cops let him go the next day, making Shorter groan when all the young ones begin to flock around the symbol of peace when he arrived outside UA. Guess he’ll lock himself up instead. He looks at one of the students and at the knife in hand. Shit. His hands begin quivering. Guess he’ll choose another way to get arrested and finishes the rest of his orders.

 

“Is he really going to become your successor? Pick me instead!” A red-haired first year raises a hand.

 

“No, me!” one of the first years pipes up.

 

“Me! I can handle it!”

 

“Shut up, amateurs. I’ll be the one to carry the Symbol of Peace’s will!”

 

Deku is unperturbed by the attention and holds his ground. “One day, you will understand the reason why I chose him.”

 

A stifling silence erupts. Deku keeps smiling and points at Shorter. “One for All chose you, Shorter Wong! You can’t fight fate! You will succeed me!”

 

Shorter wonders what hotline he needs to call to switch heavens. _You think I can’t fight fate, eh? Well shut up and watch a pro at work._

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/angeldescndnt) and [tumblr](https://treesha-san.tumblr.com/)


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